


The Woes and Wishes of an Etherian Mycologist // Body Language

by jaded_firefly



Series: She-Ra (2018) Post-Season V (Catra + Adora) [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Mushrooms, Plants, and all that good shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:34:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28861134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaded_firefly/pseuds/jaded_firefly
Summary: A couple of years after saving Etheria from Horde Prime, Catra approaches Adora about a, nuance, of their relationship.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: She-Ra (2018) Post-Season V (Catra + Adora) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124105
Kudos: 13





	The Woes and Wishes of an Etherian Mycologist // Body Language

She knew it used to be Shadow Weaver’s Brightmoon pastime of choice, but her understanding of the allure of the Whispering Wood’s herbology and plant life had begun to outweigh the more sinister connection to palace gardens and thus, Adora had one integrated into the spare room in her rather large bedroom. 

It was, in particular, the fungi that bespeckled the Whispering Wood’s floor that drew Adora in, and thus was the madonna of her little garden. They resonated of a deeper connection with Etherian magic that she was vying to understand. Even with all the aid from Bow’s Fathers on the historic botany of Etheria, she felt her answers laid in other parts of the knowledge--a more hands-on, even intimate interaction with...gods intimate. 

Just the thought she had moved to the garden to satiate or rather distract her mind from came in. Catra. Not in the room next to hers but in hers, Catra not as her closest friend but more than a friend. Catra as...wow, she really made an enticing distraction from mycology didn’t she? 

Adora gets up and brushes soil from her dress--white and gold really weren’t the colors for gardening were they? Concentrating, the soil lifts from her dress and drifts back to the pot on a wave of ever evasive Etherian Magic. The stains on her knees were proving more difficult than she initially thought. 

“Adora?” Adora, lifting her head from her task, turns to see Catra standing in the doorway of her bedroom garden. 

“Catra,” Adora sends Catra the smile she reserved just for her, “I was just thinking about you.” 

This had happened in high frequency in the past few months. Adora would think of something, someone, and they would happen or come--what was the word Glimmer used? Contriving? Clairvoyant? She’d have to ask later. 

Adora waited for a signature snide remark from Catra as she finished cleaning off her dress-- turning her full attention to Catra when she didn’t get one. 

They speak at the same time. 

“Is something…” // “Can I...”

They both laugh with a sigh of relief. Ending with a knowing smile, Adora takes the reins. 

“You first.”

Catra, making eye contact this time, finishes her question, “Can we talk?”

“Sure. Tea?”

“Yeah, that sounds great, the purple one if you still have it.”

“You know, at some point, you’re going to have to know the names of tea. What happens when I have two purple teas?” 

“That’s where a number system starts. Purple One, Purple Two, Purple Three...” the two walk out of the garden, in sync but not touching. 

The main room connects to the garden and the bedroom, with one of Brightmoon’s signature waterfalls in the back and a fireplace complete with a tea station on the opposing wall. The room itself is filled with treasures, queries, and books from Adora’s travels and journeys, and is completed with enough seating for the entirety of the Princess Alliance. 

Adora unshelves a kettle from an in-wall shelf, and after filling it with water, hangs it over the fire. Catra walks or rather paces along the open floor. Adora reaches for a fabric bag with a purple tag and pulls from it a series of dried herbs and petals. 

The water finishes and the strainer sits in the kettle. Adora grabs two cups and crosses the room to the couch. Catra follows close behind but doesn’t sit when Adora does--instead, she takes her tea standing or rather pacing. 

Adora waits, giving Catra the space to collect her thoughts, or maybe she was giving herself space to collect her own thoughts. 

“I know you’ve been sleeping with Huntara.” Catra needed less time to collect her thoughts than Adora thought. The comment, seemingly out of nowhere, was intensely applicable in context. 

“I know.” 

“You know that you’ve been sleeping with Huntara or you know that I know that you've been sleeping with Huntara.”

“I know that you know, Catra. And you know that too.” 

Catra chuckles and runs her tongue over her front teeth--her sign of “that’s fair”, but she didn’t move to say anything else. Communication really was all in body language. 

Adora couldn’t quite tell what Catra was getting at by starting like that so she responded generally-- “I mean it was something we talked about. What we were doing wasn’t really working and I never said I was going to sleep with other people but I assumed it was implied.” 

“Yeah, no. I just wanted to let you know that I know and that it doesn’t bother me, I mean it does, but it does just not in the way that people are usually bothered by their, ex, sleeping with someone else it's more like ....” Catra stops pacing, she drinks some of the purple tea, and sighs. She faces Adora. 

Even though they saw each other daily, Catra was always a little taken back by how much older Adora looked. Hair down, golden circlet across her forehead, white dress stained with dirt draped across the couch and hanging loosely on her form--Adora looked so much more like herself and it was a pleasant surprise every time Catra laid her eyes on her. 

Collecting herself in half a moment's time Catra finishes her thought-- “Did we not work out because you didn’t like sleeping with me? Because it was too much work sleeping with me?”

Adora was taken back some. That’s where she was going with this. She looked to the side and rolled her lips between her teeth--her sign of “shit… okay”--Adora never enjoyed being taken by surprise. Several moments silence pass between them. 

“No.” Adora looks at Catra, whose eyes had been pulled from the ground by Adora’s response. “Not at all.”

Catra’s mouth begins to form a “why then” but Adora continues-- 

“We weren’t really working out because we didn’t do this, talk, it was always a game of implication and I think we both got a little, weary, of it so we chose another form of being together that needed less communication--because we did still want to be together.”

Catra laughs quietly but indignantly, “Yeah right, that’s not how this works. You’re just saying that because you want to keep me around because you’re more scared of losing me than you are of hurting me. If you wanted a bang buddy you should’ve just asked--after all, I already know what you like and if that’s what matters to you I’d oblige…..” 

“Catra, it doesn’t matter to me. It never did. I just wanted to be close to you. And it seemed like I liked you more than you liked me, so I was just going down the ladder to see what you wanted--relationship, friends with,” Adora wryly coughs--just loud enough to get her point across, “or just friends. You’re important to me and that’s not contingent on where our relationship is.” Catra smiles and finally sits down. Her leg touching Adora’s. 

"Oh, so this," Catra gestures between their two mouths, "was why we weren't working? It wasn't what we were doing. You're just okay. With me. Like this." 

Since Catra’s gesture to their two mouths, Adora's eyes had been in one place, but she shifts her gaze slightly up to respond--“Yes. Unless you have become the mastermind behind another evil overlord, then...I gotta have standards you know” She playfully tugs at one of Catra’s hairs freed from her long ponytail. 

“Ow. You know I have a sensitive head! And besides, one of us has to be the brains.” Somewhere in the middle of her sentence, Adora’s cape falls to the floor. 

“If you're the brains, what in the world am I?” Catra’s ponytail slyly comes undone as the two converse. 

“The brawn, and the beauty of course. You have to have two because you’re…” Catra’s final words are lost in a dizzy of liberated fabric and shoes as the two stumble to the bedchamber. In a flurry of what you’d call--body language.


End file.
